I am an evil giraffe. Who no longer blogs about politics.

Link here: it’s a page for directly contributing to eight GOP challengers who are currently in the middle of a recount (six ahead, two behind). Note that while this page is off of the main NRCC site, any contributions made to a specific candidate will go directly to that candidate, not the national committee. The NRCC is in fact somewhat limited in what support it can provide; they can offer advice and about five grand in funds, but that’s about it. Which means that if you want to help Blake Farenthold (TX-27), Randy Altschuler (NY-01), Ann Marie Buerkle (NY-25), Renee Ellmers (NC-02), David Harmer (CA-11), Andy Vidak (CA-20), Joe Walsh (IL-08), and/or Andy Barr (KY-06), going over to Still Counting and clicking through to the candidate’s campaign site is the best way to do it.

Do you have any influence with those NRCC muttonheads? Go to the NRCC main page. You have to click or hover over the “take action” tab, and then select “still counting”. The only way, in other words, that people are going to find that is if they get sent there by somebody like you.

It should replace either the “race of the day” banner or the “see our pickups” banner. These 8 races are the most important thing on the Republican political plate right now. Why do we have to dig to find it?

To preempt, yes, I called, had a nice conversation with a nice kid in communications. He gets it, but the webmaster clearly doesn’t.

ok, they’ve put it up as an ad, sort of, on the front page, but it’s still not good. It just says ‘Votes are still being counted’, but doesn’t have donate or please help anywhere on that page, and when you go to the page itself you’d have to look carefully to realize you need to click on each individual person to donate – instead you’d be more likely to use the generic ‘donate to the NRCC’ box that’s on that page, which won’t actually direct the contributions to the folks in question. And since we’ve been told that for Ellmers, at least, the NRCC isn’t supporting her at all, we absolutely don’t want to do this.

If I were conspiracy minded I’d say this was on purpose, but I suspect bungling is much more likely.

Sigh. Thanks for trying, Moe, but the web guys over there appear to be ineducable.

Tons and tons of research has been done on this kind of thing. That ad, aside from being vaguely named, is in the second worst spot it could possibly be. No, I’m serious, that is the second worst spot on the webpage.

It should be top left, where they currently have the “race of the day” button. None of those appear to be any of the races that are actually, you know, in recount status, either. So, the single most valuable piece of web real estate is badly out of date, and the most important issue they have to address is in the second most worthless piece of web real estate. Aaaargh.

Yeah, Ellmers behavior has left a bit to be desired. But the national party apparatus has not covered itself in glory. Ellmers is, after all, an RN, and the NRCC are allegedly professional political operatives. If we want citizens running and winning, the pros are going to have to take the lion’s share of the operational burden, and likewise the lion’s share of the blame for failures to communicate.